Good morning.
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Today’s introduction comes from Thomas Fuller, our San Francisco bureau chief.
Free speech is expensive. That was one takeaway from the University of California, Berkeley campus on Thursday as the Berkeley College Republicans hosted Ben Shapiro, the latest in a line of conservative speakers to roil the flagship campus. The university estimated it spent $600,000 on security for Mr. Shapiro’s visit, not a pittance for an institution that has struggled financially in recent years.
Dan Mogulof, a spokesman for the university, said a similar amount was spent in April to secure the campus during the planned visit, later canceled, of Ann Coulter, the right-wing pundit.
Like Ms. Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos, another right-wing provocateur whose visit to the campus sparked outrage in February, Mr. Shapiro has made a career out of poking fun of liberal beliefs and casting college campuses as bastions of intellectual intolerance. The 1,000 tickets to see Mr. Shapiro’s Thursday show, titled “Say No To Campus Thuggery,” sold out in less than an hour.
Continue reading the main storyThis was not Mr. Shapiro’s first speech at Berkeley. But in a measure of how politicized the free-speech issue has become at the campus, his previous visit in April 2016 occurred with little protest.
On Thursday, with news helicopters hovering and hundreds of police officers deployed across the campus, many Berkeley students lamented they had become unwitting actors in a show of political Kabuki.
By the end of the night, the authorities said they had arrested nine people, some of them accused of carrying banned weapons. But no major violence was reported.
Meanwhile, if the university needed another symbol of the cost of the ideological battles, Sproul Plaza, famous as the site of Free Speech movement protests of the 1960s, was closed off as a security precaution.
Jim Wilson, our Bay Area photographer, captured some of the scenes on Thursday:
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° ° °California Online
(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.)
• Hmong farmers have poured into Siskiyou County and planted marijuana crops valued as high as $1 billion. The sheriff sees the hidden hand of organized crime. [Los Angeles Times]
• In some California counties, there are more opioid prescriptions than people. [Sacramento Bee]
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• Hundreds of people held a vigil in West Sacramento after three children, one an infant, were found dead. The authorities accused their father of the killings. [Sacramento Bee]
• Dixie symbols in the Deep South have been a focus of protest. But California has its share of symbols that echo a legacy of racism and genocide. [CALmatters]
• Oakland’s Blue Bottle Coffee has a reputation for high-end artisanal coffee. Now it has a new owner: Nestlé. [The New York Times]
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• Women make up 31 percent of Google’s total work force but comprise only 20 percent of higher-paying engineering jobs. [The New York Times]
• A San Diego area company is creating a sex robot that can talk. Some critics see the technology as a harbinger of dystopia. [San Diego Union-Tribune]
• Oakland homeowners make an average profit of $235,000 when they sell, new data showed. [San Francisco Business Times]
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• The relatively unknown story of photography’s crucial role in the Chicano movement is featured in a new exhibition in Los Angeles. [The New York Times]
• “Will & Grace” is back. Will its portrait of gay life hold up? [The New York Times]
Legislative Action
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State lawmakers have been voting on a flurry of bills during the final week of the legislative session.
Among those sent to Gov. Jerry Brown are measures that would:
— require drug companies to report and justify price hikes
— ban the sale of animals from so-called puppy mills
— ban smoking marijuana or tobacco at California beaches
— provide a year of free tuition to community college students
— add a “non-binary” gender option on California driver’s licenses
In one of the closest watched debates, the Assembly narrowly approved a package of bills late Thursday aimed at easing the housing crisis, The Associated Press reported. The measures go before the Senate today.
And Finally ...
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Name a nut, fruit or vegetable and California could well have a festival dedicated to it.
The state hosts at least 50 annual celebrations of produce, including dates, grapes, olives, zucchini, corn, carrots, walnuts, pistachios, pumpkins — and many more.
So is California the nation’s crop festival capital?
Nick Matteis, executive director of California Grown, an agricultural marketing initiative, said he couldn’t provide a statistical comparison.
“But,” he added, “I would say by virtue of the fact that we grow 350-plus crops, which nobody can come close to in the rest of the nation, we would most likely have the festival circuit locked down.”
He said some of the most popular celebrations are those for pumpkins in Half Moon Bay, garlic in Gilroy, strawberries in Oxnard, avocados in Fallbrook and artichokes in Castroville.
The festivals appear to be at least as much about regional identity as agricultural production.
In Goleta, just outside Santa Barbara, many of the once numerous citrus groves have long since been replaced by development.
Even so, an annual lemon festival is one of the biggest events of the social calendar.
This year’s event kicks off on Saturday, with a car show, miniature golf and lemon meringue pies.
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The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a third-generation Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Los Osos. Follow him on Twitter.
California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.
Continue reading the main story Source: http://ift.tt/2xDyXUw
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